by Tom Clancy
“Mackall, what’s happening down your way?” the troop executive officer inquired.
“Where’s Six?”
“To your left.” Mackall looked and saw the troop commander’s burning tank. So that’s who it was . . .
“Just us, sir. What’s left?”
“I count four.”
My God, the sergeant thought.
“Get me a Regiment from the tank division and I can do it. They have nothing left!” the colonel insisted. His face was bloody from a superficial wound.
“I will do this. How soon can you continue the attack?” Alekseyev asked.
“Two hours. I need that long to regroup my forces.”
“Very well. I must return to headquarters. The enemy opposition was tougher than you expected, Comrade Colonel. Otherwise your forces performed well. Tell your intelligence section to work harder. Gather up your prisoners and interrogate them rigorously!” Alekseyev moved off with Sergetov in his wake.
“Worse than I expected,” the captain observed once they were inside their vehicle.
“They must have had nearly a Regiment facing us.” Alekseyev shrugged. “We can’t make that kind of mistake very often and expect to succeed. We advanced four kilometers in two hours, but the cost was murderous. And those bastards in the Air Force! I’ll have something to say to our Frontal Aviation generals when we get back!”
“That makes you troop XO,” the lieutenant said. It turned out there were five surviving tanks. One had both radios broken. “You did good, real good.”
“How’d the Germans make out?” Mackall asked his new boss.
“Fifty-percent losses, and Ivan kicked us back four klicks. We can’t expect to survive much more of this. We may have some reinforcements in an hour. I think I convinced Regiment that Ivan really wants this place. We’ll be getting help. Same for the Germans. They promised another battalion by nightfall, maybe a second one by dawn. Take your track down for refuel and reload. Our friends may be back soon.”
“That’s one little and two big attacks for this village. They ain’t got it yet, sir.”
“One other thing. I talked to Regiment about you. The colonel says you’re an officer now.”
Mackall’s tank spent ten minutes getting to the rearm point. Fueling took ten minutes while the exhausted crewmen loaded a new collection of shells. The sergeant was surprised that he had to head back to the front five rounds short.
“You’ve been hit, Pasha.” The younger man shook his head.
“I scratched my hand getting out of the helicopter. I’ll let it bleed awhile to punish myself for clumsiness.” Alekseyev sat opposite his commander and downed a full liter canteen of water. He was embarrassed by his slight wound and decided to lie about it.
“The attack?”
“Opposition was ferocious. We’d been told to expect two infantry battalions, plus tanks. I estimate the actual enemy strength as a damaged regiment, and they had well-prepared positions. Even so, we almost broke through. The colonel in command had a good plan, and his men pushed as hard as anyone could expect. We forced them back to within sight of the objective. I want to release a regiment of tanks from the OMG to the next attack.”
“We are not permitted to do this.”
“What?” Alekseyev was stunned.
“The Operational Maneuver Groups are to remain intact until the breakthrough is achieved. Orders from Moscow.”
“One more regiment will do it. The objective is in sight! We’ve chewed up one motor rifle division to get this far, and lost half the strength of another. We can win this battle and get the first major rupture in NATO lines—but we have to act now!”
“You’re certain?”
“Yes, but we must move fast. The Germans must realize how close this battle has become. They’ll try to reinforce also. The lead regiment from 30th Guards Tank Division is one hour from the front. If we can get them moving within thirty minutes, they’ll be part of the next attack. In fact, we should move the whole division up. This opportunity will not last long.”
“Very well. I’ll call STAVKA for permission.”
Alekseyev leaned back and closed his eyes. The Soviet command structure: to deviate from the Plan, even a Theater commander had to get permission! It took over an hour while the staff geniuses in Moscow examined the maps. The lead regiment of 30th Guards was released and ordered to join the motor-rifle division in the next attack. But they were late, and the attack was delayed ninety minutes.
Second Lieutenant Terry Mackall—he still wore his stripes and was too tired to care about his change in rank—wondered how seriously Command was taking this little tank battle. Two battalions of German regulars arrived in tracked vehicles, relieving the exhausted Landwehr men, who moved back to prepare defensive positions in and around the village to their rear. A company of Leopard tanks and two platoons of M-1s reinforced the position, with a German colonel in overall command. He arrived by helicopter and surveyed all the defensive positions. A tough-looking little bastard, Mackall thought, with some bandages on his face and a tight unsmiling mouth. Mackall remembered that if Ivan broke through here, he just might be able to flank the German and British forces that had stopped the Russians’ deepest penetration at the suburbs of Hannover. That made the battle important to the Germans.
The German Leopards took the frontal positions, relieving the Americans. It was a full troop now, back to fourteen vehicles. The troop commander split the force into two parts, with Mackall commanding the southern group. They found the last line of dug shelters, just southeast of the village. Mackall arrayed his newly assigned command with care, checking each position on foot and conferring with each tank commander. The Germans were thorough enough. Any position that did not already have natural shrubbery in place had had it transplanted in. Nearly all of the civilians who lived here had been evacuated, but a handful of people were unwilling to desert the homes they’d built. One of them brought some of the tankers hot food. Mackall’s crew didn’t have time to eat it. The gunner repaired two loose connectors and reset the balky fire-control computer. The loader and driver worked on a loose tread. Artillery was falling around them before they finished.
Alekseyev wanted to be there. He had a telephone link with the division, and listened in on the division command circuit. The colonel—Alekseyev wanted to make him a general if the attack succeeded—complained that they had been forced to wait too long. He’d asked for and gotten a reconnaissance mission over enemy lines. One of the aircraft had vanished. The other’s pilot reported movement, but could not provide a strength estimate, so busy had he been dodging surface-to-air missiles. The colonel feared there had been an increase in enemy strength, but without hard evidence could not justify either a further delay or further reinforcements.
Mackall also watched from a distance. The last row of hills was a mile away, across what had been a farm but was now covered mostly with small trees, as though the soil had been exhausted. His forces were organized in two three-tank platoons. As commander, his job was to lie back and direct them by radio.
Twenty minutes after the radio reported a strong Russian advance, he began to see movement. German personnel carriers began streaming down the hill, toward the village. Some Soviet helicopters appeared to the north, but this time a Roland battery hidden in the village engaged them, exploding three before they retreated out of sight. Next came the German Leopard tanks. Mackall counted and came up three short. NATO artillery pounded the hilltops, and Soviet guns dropped shells in the fields around the American tanks. Then the Russians appeared.
“Buffalo, all units hold fire. Repeat, everyone hold fire,” the troop commander said over the radio.
Mackall saw that the retreating Germans were passing through the village. So, that’s what that little Kraut bastard has planned, he thought. Beautiful . . .
“We have them on the run!” the colonel told Alekseyev over the command circuit. On the map table in front of the General, counters were moved and plotting
officers made marks with grease pencils. They penciled in a red gap in the German lines.
The leading Soviet tanks were now five hundred meters from the village, racing down the two-kilometer gap between B-Troop’s tanks. The German colonel gave his order to the American troop commander.
“Buffalo, this is Six—take ’em!” Twelve tanks fired at once and hit nine targets.
“Woody, look for antennas,” Mackall ordered his gunner. He used his viewing prisms to keep an eye on his subordinates as the gunner traversed right and searched the rear Soviet ranks.
“There’s one! Load a HEAT round! Target tank. Range twenty-six hundred—” The tank lurched sideways. The gunner watched the tracer on the shell arc through the air on its two-mile path . . . “Hit!”
The second volley from the M-1s killed eight tanks, then others began to explode from antitank missiles launched out of the village. The Russians had defiladed tanks on their flanks, and in front of them was a village bristling with antitank missiles: the German colonel had set a moving ambush, and the pursuing Russians had fallen into it. Already the Leopards were sweeping around left and right from behind the village to catch the Russians in the open. The air-control officer brought his fighter-bombers in on the Soviet artillery positions yet again. Soviet fighters engaged them, but while doing that they could not interfere with the land battle, and now a squadron of German Gazelle missile-armed choppers added their fire into the killing ground. The Soviet tanks fired off smoke and desperately tried to engage their enemies, but the Americans were dug in deep, and the German missileers in the village skillfully changed firing points after every shot.
Mackall shifted one platoon right and the other left. His own gunner located and killed a second command tank, then the Germans enveloped the Russian formation from north and south. Still outnumbered, the Germans nevertheless caught the Russians off balance, raking the tank column with their big 120mm gun tubes. The Soviet commander ordered his helicopters back in to blast open an escape route. They surprised and killed three German tanks before missiles began to drop them from the sky yet again. Suddenly it became too much. As Mackall watched, the Soviet force wheeled and retreated toward the hills, with the Germans in pursuit. The counterattack was pressed to the limit, and Mackall knew that nobody did that as well as the Krauts. By the time he had orders to move, the initial defense position was back in friendly hands. The battle had lasted barely over an hour. Two Soviet motor-rifle divisions had now been decimated on the road to Bieben.
The crewmen opened their hatches to let fresh air into the stifling turret. Fifteen empty cases rattled about on the floor. The fire-control computer was out again, but Woody had killed another four tanks, two of them belonging to Soviet officers. The troop commander came over to him in a jeep.
“Three tanks damaged,” Mackall reported. “Have to drag them clear for repairs.” His face split into a wide grin: “They ain’t never gonna take this town away from us!”
“Those Bundeswehr regulars made the difference.” The lieutenant nodded. “Okay, start getting your people reloaded.”
“Oh, yeah. Last time I came back five rounds short.”
“They’re thinning out the ammo issue. It’s not getting across to us as quick as we thought.”
Mackall thought that one over and didn’t like what he came up with. “Have somebody tell those Navy pukes that we can stop these bastards if they get their shit together!”
USS PHARRIS
Morris had never seen Hampton Roads so crowded. At least sixty merchantmen were swinging at anchor, with a beefed-up escort force preparing to take them to sea. Saratoga was in also, her mainmast gone and a replacement being fabricated on the quay while repairs were under way for less visible damage from her near-miss. Numerous aircraft circled overhead, and several ships had their search radars on lest a Soviet submarine sneak close inshore and launch cruise missiles into the mass of shipping.
Pharris was tied to the fueling pier, taking on fuel oil for her boilers and jet fuel for her helicopter. The single ASROC she’d expended had already been replaced, as had the six chaff rockets. Aside from that, the only thing that needed to be taken aboard was food. Ed Morris handed his patrol report to a messenger who would deliver it to his squadron commander. He would have gone himself, but there was no time. They were scheduled to sail in another twelve hours. This was another twenty-knot convoy, bound for the French ports of LeHavre and Brest with heavy equipment and munitions.
Morris had been given the fleet intelligence report. If anything, matters had gotten worse. Twenty NATO submarines were now staked out in the G-I-UK gap, trying to make up for the loss of the SOSUS line. They reported killing a sizable number of Soviet submarines, but they also reported that some had gotten through, and for each known leaker, Morris was sure that there were four or five unknowns. The first convoy had gotten virtually a free ride. Those few Soviet submarines in the Atlantic at the time had been spread thin, and were forced to race noisily to their convoy targets. No longer. About sixty were thought to be in the Atlantic now, at least half of them nuclear-powered. Morris thought over the numbers, what the Soviet inventory was, how many kills NATO claimed, and wondered if sixty was an optimistic assessment.
Then there were the Backfires. The convoy would be taking a southerly routing, adding two full days to the crossing time but forcing the Soviet bombers to stretch to the limit of their fuel. Also, thirty minutes before each satellite pass, the convoy would reverse course to a westerly heading in the hope that the Soviets would then vector their bombers and submarines to the wrong point. A pair of carrier battle groups was at sea and would offer support if possible. Clearly they wanted to spring a trap on the Backfires. The carrier groups would be steaming an evasive path, trying to avoid satellite detection entirely. Morris knew this was possible, an exercise in geometry, but it placed serious limits on the carriers’ freedom of action—and having the carrier groups at sea would take up some of the antisubmarine patrol aircraft that the convoys depended on. A compromise, but then all life, and certainly any war operation, was a collection of compromises. Morris lit an unfiltered cigarette. He’d broken the habit years before, but halfway through the outbound leg of his first war cruise he’d found himself at the ship’s store purchasing a carton of tax-free “at sea” smokes. The added hazard to his health, he judged, was no more than incidental. Already nine destroyers and frigates had been sunk, two with all hands.
ICELAND
Edwards had learned to hate the rust-colored contour lines on his maps. Each one announced a change of twenty meters. He tried to work it out in his head, but got no further than sixty-five-point-six feet for every one of the Goddamned red-brown lines. Sometimes the lines were spread apart by as much as an eighth of an inch. Other times they were packed together tightly enough that the lieutenant half expected to find a sheer wall. He remembered the one visit he’d had to Washington, D.C., and the time he and his father had scornfully walked past the tourists lined up to wait for an elevator ride to the top of the Washington Monument, preferring to walk the five hundred feet up the square-spiral staircase to the observation deck. They’d arrived at the top tired but proud. He was now making that same climb about every ninety minutes, except this time there were no smooth, even steps, and no elevator awaited them at the top for a more relaxing trip down . . . and no taxi to the hotel.
They climbed ten contour lines—two hundred meters, or six hundred fifty-six feet—three hours after breaking camp; crossing, the map said, from the Skorradalshreppur second-order administrative division to the Lundarreykjadashreppur second-order administrative division. There was no green highway sign to announce this, the Icelanders being bright enough to know that anyone who traveled out here lived here and needed no directions. They were rewarded with two kilometers of fairly level terrain as they walked between a pair of marshes. It was littered with rock and ash from what seemed to be an extinct volcano about four miles away.
“Take a break,” Edwards sai
d. He sat down next to a three-foot rock so that he’d have something to lean against, and was surprised when Vigdis came over. She sat down three feet away, facing him.
“How are you today?” he asked. There was life in her eyes now, Mike saw. Perhaps the demons that had awakened her the previous day were now gone? No, he thought, they’d never be completely gone—but you had to be alive to have nightmares, and they would probably fade in time. With time you could recover from anything, except murder.
“I have not thank you for my life.”
“We could not stand by and let them kill you,” he said, wondering if it was a lie. If the Russians had simply killed all three people in the house, would he have attacked them or would he have waited and simply looted the house after they’d left? It was a time for the truth.
“I didn’t do it for you, not only for you.”
“I do not understand.”
Edwards took his wallet from a back pocket and opened it to a five-year-old photograph. “That’s Sandy, Sandra Miller. We grew up on the same block, all the way through school. Maybe we would have gotten married someday,” he said quietly. And maybe not, he admitted to himself. People change. “I went to the Air Force Academy, she went to the University of Connecticut in Hartford. October of her second year, she disappeared. She was raped and murdered. They found her a week later in a ditch. The guy who did it—they never proved he killed Sandy, but he raped two other girls at the school—well, he’s in a mental hospital now. They said he was crazy, wasn’t really responsible. So someday the does’ll say he’s cured, and they’ll let him out, and Sandy’ll still be dead.” Edwards looked down at the rocks.